© iStock / J.P. Gomez
Luxembourg has announced that in order to cut costs and improve its efforts to deter drivers from speeding, the dozens of individual fixed speed cameras all over the country will be replaced by a single very tall one.
Nicknamed “The Eye of Sauer,” the new 152-meter-tall speed camera will be able to catch speeders in every town and village from Troisvierges all the way to Bettembourg.
Proponents of the plan say that maintenance costs will go down significantly.
“Instead of having a team of workers going all around the country to fix technical problems and calibrate the radar, we’ll only need one guy to take care of a single speed camera,” said Claude Hoffman, who is overseeing the transition. “The new speed camera is going to be much wider than the other ones, and we plan on building a little apartment inside of it for the maintenance man.”
“We’re going make it very cozy to compensate for the fact that he’ll have to walk up 252 stairs to go to bed every night” he added.
Another benefit is that the state will no longer have to spend money on manufacturing and installing signs warning of a speed camera because drivers will know they are always being watched no matter where they are.
“The new speed camera might not look very appealing at first, but we believe it will become iconic,” Hoffman said. “Like the Eiffel Tower in Paris, which at first was ridiculed as being ugly, or so I’ve heard.”
Hoffman says that he envisions turning the new tall speed camera into a site that people can visit from the inside.
“We can charge visitors a euro to climb all the way up, and we’re also thinking of putting a restaurant at the top, just like other famous towers,” Hoffman said.
Ethnologists are already showing interest in the new tall speed camera, predicting that eventually it will be seen as a totem, a sacred tower that not only protects the country from speeders but also from evil spirits and meteorological misery.
“Inhabitants will come to see the speed camera as not only all-seeing, but also as all-knowing and omnipotent,” said Desdemona Jinx, a University of Wiltz professor and expert in religions based on traffic-control tools. “I predict that people will one day visit the speed camera and ask that it grant them prosperity or good health, and they will probably leave personal items such as toy cars, padlocks, or photographs of loved ones in front of it.”
